If you get the chance, SPEAK TO OLDER PEOPLE

I will say until you are near-fluent you won't be able to judge people's true intentions. For example, if you are near-fluent and totally refuse to speak English, certain people won't become your "friend" that otherwise would have. But if you aren't near fluent, some genuine people who didn't actually see you as just an "opportunity" will also not become your bud and hangout simply because the burden of communicating with you in Chinese makes it too exhausting.

To me the distinction between the two is important, but as a beginner or lower intermediate pretty much impossible to know. I can guarantee this reality both because of my own experience, but also because I have a CBC friend who spoke truly excellent Mandarin and only ended up actual friends with a fraction of the people he got on well with (during a year), because he could tell they would avoid him when they didn't get as much English as they wanted out of the relationship.

My thoughts: Be careful but give folks the benefit of the doubt. Remember no Chinese in the West gets bandited for Mandarin, so we have every right to decide to speak 100% Chinese in China.

/r/ChineseLanguage Thread Parent